Chris Potter Quartet On JazzSet

Now in his early 40s, Chris Potter is “the most commandingly skilled saxophonist of his generation,” according to New York Times jazz writer Nate Chinen.

Potter and JazzSet host Dee Dee Bridgewater have just come off three months with the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour, traveling the country by bus. On the bandstand, Bridgewater liked to say to Potter, “I want someone to draw a picture of you and your horn, with cascades of notes pouring out.” She loved working with him. Potter plays what he imagines, and he thinks on his feet. He’s tuneful, soulful and forward-moving.

Chris Potter’s The Sirens is inspired by the ancient Greek tale of exile, The Odyssey by Homer. He’d read The Odyssey in high school in South Carolina. More than two decades later, he read it again, connecting with it even more because Homer’s epic “is all about big themes set in bold relief ‘” romantic adventure and a return to home, temptation and identity, life and death. Things we all deal with today.”